An Australian startup called Cortical Labs has built what appears to be a David Cronenbergian box of grotesqueries that looks a lot sleeker and modern than its innards belie. It’s a computer—a weird and gross one—that runs on human brain cells.
It does this while looking like an Apple-designed shoebox circa 1999. It’s named CL1 and, oh yeah, and it’s also got some AI stuff going on? A lot is happening here, and all of it is unsettling.
A few years ago, Cortical Labs showed off a video of how it made a collection of brain cells in a petri dish play Pong, which sounds like more than enough evidence to throw them in prison on the grounds of simply being too freaky with science.
Now, Cortical Labs is back with a computer that is powered by thousands of tiny human brain cells spread across a silicon chip that is immersed in a nutrient-rich solution. It would not at all be surprising if that chip were fleshy and pulsating and maybe admitted a low-frequency human moan every once in a while.
This ‘Biological Computer’ Runs on Human Brain Cells—and You Can Buy It for $35,000
This merging of human tissue and technological components lets users “deploy code directly to the real neurons,” which sounds like the perverted dreams of every modern tech billionaire who fancies himself a God. I’m not sure if PCs that run on human brains are something the commercial market is ready for, but dammit. Cortical Labs is leading the charge on disturbing technology.
As for practical applications for what Cortical Labs calls the “first commercialized biological computer,” the company says it envisions a future where it’s merging of machine and human brains can be used in “disease modeling or drug testing”—both uses seem rather mundane for such an odd box.
The advantage of a brain cell-powered AI box thing is that, at least according to Cortical Labs, it consumes a lot less power than traditional AI. Only time will tell if brain cell-powered computers become the standard or if they’re just another bizarre novelty idea that could never find a practical application to latch onto.
But if there’s one thing we do know it’s that it’s weird as hell.
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